How They Dance
by time.forgets
Summary: It really was a smile back then because when you're six you hardly know the meaning of smirks or about being emotionless. You can hardly spell it. I was six the first time I realized I was different.


**I've been bad I know but I've actually started writing the next chapter of No One Will Know and that will be out ASAP and this, in the meantime, just had to escape my head. It's 1:00 in the morning now and I'm not in the best frame of mind so this might end up making no sense but like I said, it needed to come out.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything except for a pair of wings.**

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I was six the first time I realized I was different. I was talking to a girl in my class, about dolls, about friends, about whatever girls talk about when they're six. I never really paid attention anyway. The girl was half-way through a sentence when I just looked up. Not at the sky, I didn't care about looking at that but at the creatures flying between where I was standing and the endless scope of blue.  
What are you looking at the girl asked me and I didn't think. Didn't think that maybe no one else could see the creatures and didn't think of repercussions of telling her the truth. I should have known then; truth…boom.  
I'm just looking at the creatures I told her, only dragging my eyes back down to hers for a second, unable to resist their horrible beauty for too long. Look at how they dance and I had said with a smile. And it really was a smile back then because when you're six you hardly know the meaning of smirks or about being emotionless. You can hardly spell it.  
I remember her looking scared. Actual fear written right across her face the way only a child can show. But there aren't any birds she had said, the fear growing stronger as I kept on smiling. I remember seeing her fear. A big dark ball growing larger and larger like a storm cloud around her head and then it hit me that maybe it wasn't just adults who couldn't see what I saw, maybe it was everyone. Maybe every time I had told people what I see as I danced around they had been playing pretend with me, shrieking at monsters that they had made up themselves. I wondered if they'd scream the same way if they could see the ones I saw. I smiled at the thought, strangely although not quite unaware that one day that strange smile would be all that people would see of me.

I was four when I ran away for the first time. My mum had stood there with her eyes shut for ages, counting quietly to herself, daring me to do something although then I didn't know what. I had stood there, until she reached twenty-nine before I ran, squeezing into a tiny place where not even the creatures following in my wake could see me. I smiled as I sat there for hours and thought maybe I would just stay like this forever.

I was seventeen when I first tried to kill myself. I hadn't thought about doing it. I hadn't. It was the demons that wove their darkness through my head that had planted the thought and watered it until it grew and took over my entire body; it's weaving branches and sharp thorns making unable to think of anything else. I hadn't thought about it. They had made me.  
Freddie. Freddie. Freddie had been my light but the problem with that was that his light was so beautiful, so bright it surrounded me in its bright cocoon. I didn't mind the light but the darkness, busy tending to its thoughts in my head, did and it shied away from his light, locking itself into my body, too scared to escape into the surrounding light. Things were beautiful on the outside but on the inside the thoughts and the darkness were eating me alive. I struggled to breathe. I tried to let them out but the holes on my wrist were soon covered with his light again. I had tried to give the darkness an out but it was too afraid to do anything but kill me slowly.

I was ten when I got a pair of wings. They were beautiful; soft, white cardboard perfection. I had worn them all day, ignoring the tightness of the straps and the looks that people gave me. I guess they had never seen a ten-year-old walking around with only her wings for company. They didn't bother me though because for a whole day I wasn't chased by creatures and demons. For a whole day I could fly.

I was thirteen when I heard words go past me backwards. I knew it was them, the giant menagerie of fucked up creatures that followed me that had done it. I knew they had taken the words flying towards me and flipped them around before they reached my head. They did it to fuck with me; just to show me who was in control because then I was young enough that I still believed those demons couldn't hurt me and old enough to worry that they could. I liked those backwards words though, as much as they reminded me who else was in my head. They were comforting like the dancing creatures from when I was younger, like hot chocolate on a cold morning and like the rough taste of alcohol as it made me forget. I liked those backwards words but I would do anything to forget.

I was fifteen when my brother died in front of me. I saw the bus as it came sweeping through and I saw the excited grins of the demons as they leapt onto his slumped bloody body. I screamed because I had never seen them look like that before, the expression on their face so chilling that I was sure if the bus hadn't killed my brother they certainly would. I leapt out of the car without thinking, without breathing because I could see the swirling blackness and I knew what it would mean for Tony. I begged them as I cried, told them that it was me they really wanted, they had told me that from the start so why take Tony anyway, he was of no use to them, his light shone too brightly. I begged them for so long, one smirking figure after another taking form right in front of my eyes all the while laughing, screaming their voices echoing around and around in my head.  
Take my life instead I yelled at them but they didn't want it.  
Take my sanity I bargained but they laughed and said they already had it.  
Take my soul I finally said and with the offer lingering in the freezing air they snatched it and carried it away, leaving me and Tony in the street. That night I had given my soul away but as I watched his eyes slowly open in that dingy hospital room I knew I had made the right choice. I just didn't know they'd come back for more.

I wasn't anything when I was born. But I had become a bomb. That's what Anthea tells me anyway. I held you she says to me shakily, still not used to these open lines of communication. And you were like a fucking, like a fucking bomb. That's what she told me that night. The night Cook walked into my house and changed everything, had made me crazier than ever but had also satisfied the creatures, their stomachs full of love and loss and him and I knew from their happy faces that eventually they'd be back for more but for now they rested, their dark shapes shifting around restlessly in my head and making me yell until I could hear myself think. It was strange at first. Hearing only me in my head and not the jumbled thoughts of a thousand demons but eventually the emptiness became calming, it let me sleep, mum holding onto me tightly just in case one of them broke free and set fire to all the crazy thoughts I was thinking. Just in case.

I was seven when they chased me for the first time. They were fast and angry and I only had little legs and a giant city in front of me but I knew that I couldn't let them catch me even then so I ignored the pain in my thin little legs and kept on running until I found a giant park, little kids, kids my age playing all over it without a care. I remember wondering then if any of them had to run as fast as I did but then I saw the laughter flowing out of them like a song and felt the light from their giant smiles warm my tired body and I realized that they didn't have to run because they were the ones doing the chasing, chasing away the dark creatures with their light and I wondered why the world chose me to not be able to smile. I smirked at the kids on the playground because they would never understand. I smirked at the kids on the playground because I couldn't remember how to smile.

I was sixteen when I fell in love. He was beautiful and bright and he made the demons giddy with happiness. I should have known then that doing anything would be bad, it had to be with the amount of smiles the creatures were passing out but I felt the way his eyes ran over me. Like he could see I didn't know how to smile. Like he wanted to teach me.


End file.
